Every single time I see ‘please RT’/'please retweet’ I have a strange feeling. It’s like seeing an ad. Or someone trying to sell me something. In my case (at least), when I see a please RT after a certain message, chances of actually passing that message further fall way below.
And I’m not taking here about humanitarian causes or charity campaigns. I’m talking about the usual messages/links running in my twitter stream. Worst case: your blog posts.
You don’t write on your blog, share it on Twitter and then add please RT. Trust me! If you’re really good, if your content rocks, it will get promoted. People are more than happy to spread the news around and share the good stuff.
I’m reading ‘Oh My God What Happened and What Should I Do?’, a brilliant manifesto that points out the major changes going around the marketing industry in connection with the fast growing of digital. The book is intended to be a tool for the traditional advertising and marketing people, to make their lives easy in the digital era and provide guidance in creating campaigns that will reach the people of today.
One statement that I stumbled upon was Lies have long tweets and they illustrated this by providing the following example.
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Let’s say you’re the patient of a dental clinic. And one day you make an appointment for an extraction (bad case scenario). After that, you take all the necessary painkillers, make the second appointment for the usual check-up, pack and go home. What happens next? The next day you get a call from the clinic: a nice lady asks if you’re feeling OK, if you took your medicine and if everything is in order. After one week, the day before you have your next appointment at the clinic, you receive an SMS from them, reminding you that the next day at 2 pm you have your check-up.
This is to give you a simple example of how companies/health institutions/organizations etc. can really make a difference and show appreciation towards their clients/patients by providing a high class customer care. Did the whole story really happen?
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I will write about a nice example of customer care coming from Royal Dutch Airlines. It happened this summer, in Vienna International Airport, while waiting to board for Amsterdam.
Couple of thoughts beforehand: I know the airline’s website is also important. Having a clear and intelligible interface and a user friendly design it’s crucial. You want to offer your customer a great user experience from Choose your destination all the way to Confirm your booking. But booking your tickets represents only a small part of the whole story, in my opinion. What happens in between boarding and landing makes the difference between keeping your loyal customers and make them ask themselves questions on whether or not they chose the right airline.
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Just came across a remarkable piece of communication which I would very much like to share with you in the following lines. It’s not about an award-winning print that never made it to the real world, I’m talking here about a campaign which, planned in high detail and executed flawlessly, managed to deliver great results.
Agency: Harrison Troughton Wunderman
Client: National Phobics Society (Anxiety UK), one of the leading charities for those who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
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“Advertising is what you do when you can’t send a salesman” (Raymond Rubicam)
The problem is, whether it’s direct mail, digital or TV, there’s often a ‘salesman’ around at the worst possible time of the day – when the consumer is thinking about anything but the problems that your product solves.
It pays off knowing how to communicate at the moment of truth:
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